Fassbinder : the life and work of a provocative genius / Christian Braad Thomsen ; translated by Martin Chalmers.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Braad Thomsen, Christian, 1940-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Fassbinder, Rainer Werner, 1945-1982--Criticism and interpretation.

Fassbinder, Rainer Werner.

Fassbinder, Rainer Werner, 1945-1982.

Criticism and interpretation.

Motion pictures--Germany--Biography.

Motion pictures.

Germany.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

x, 358 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 23 cm

Edition:

First University of Minnesota Press edition.

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2004.

Summary:

Rainer Werner Fassbinder was the most innovative practitioner of New German Cinema. He worked at breakneck speed and in fourteen years made forty-four films, including Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1973) and The Marriage of Maria Braun (1978). Fassbinder ruthlessly attacked both German bourgeois society and the larger limitations of humanity, and his films detail the desperate yearning for love and freedom and the many ways in which society defeats that desire. In Fassbinder, Christian Thomsen, a close friend of the director, illuminates Fassbinder's body of work while revealing his insider views of a man who, despite a furious temper, manic working habits, and rampant drug addiction, supported an extended family -- including his mother, a string of male lovers, lovelorn women, and even a pair of frustrated wives -- with his intoxicating and prolific imagination. This book, like Fassbinder's often-used image of the mirror, brilliantly reflects the sexual, political, and overwhelmingly human contradictions inherent in the life of this intensely creative man and the remarkable films he directed.

Contents:

1 The Double Man 1

The Parental Home

Freud's Moses

Berlin 1969

Violence and Terror

Violence and the Erotic

Artistic Exile

Mirrors and Dolls

The Actors

The Filming of Language

Inner Images

The Utopia of Childhood

Death

2 The Sad Days Are Over! 45

The Two Short Films

Drops of Water on Hot Stones

Action Theatre

Antitheatre

Iphigenia in Taurus by Johann Wolfgang Goethe

The American Soldier

The Beggar's Opera

The Burning Village

Preparadise Sorry Now

Anarchy in Bavaria

Werwolf

Blood on the Cat's Neck

Baal

3 Cinema Films 65

Love is Colder than Death

Gods of the Plague

Whity

4 The Bourgeois Films 78

Katzelmacher

Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?

Rio das Mortes

5 Self-Criticism 87

The Journey to Niklashausen

Beware of a Holy Whore

Pioneers in Ingolstadt

6 Bavaria and Hollywood 101

The Merchant of Four Seasons

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

Wildwechsel

7 Television Series 121

Eight Hours Are Not a Day

World on a Wire

8 Women's Films 137

Fear Eats the Soul

Effi Briest

Martha

9 Video Films 166

The Coffee Shop

Bremen Coffee

Nora Helmer

Like a Bird on the Wire

10 Demanding without Loving 180

Fox and his Friends

Fear of Fear

Mother Kuster's Trip to Heaven

11 Theatre Dreams 191

Germinal

Miss Julie

12 Loss of Identity 198

Garbage, the City and Death

The Anti-Semitism Campaign

Satan's Brew

I Only Want You to Love Me

Chinese Roulette

13 Fascism Will Be Victorious 223

Bolwieser

Despair

A Journey into the Light

Berlin Alexanderplatz

14 Terrorism and the Nuclear Family 250

Germany in Autumn

In a Year with 13 Moons

The Third Generation

15 The Mata-Haris of the Economic Miracle 273

The Marriage of Maria Braun

Lola

Veronika Voss

16 Commissioned Works 291

Women in New York

Lili Marleen

Theatre in a Trance

Kamikaze

17 Querelle 302

Plays 348

Radio Plays 350.

Notes:

Originally published: London ; Boston : Faber and Faber, 1997.

Filmography: pages 320-347.

"Plays": pages 348-349.

"Radio plays": page 350.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 351-353) and index.

ISBN:

0816643644

9780816643646

OCLC:

54024188